The Health and Behavioral Assessment Intervention (HBAI) helps address cognitive, emotional, social, behavioral and psychological issues in an allowed claim. It's been shown that a number of these issues heighten the risk of prolonged pain and disability. These risk factors may be:

Catastrophic thinking.

Inadequate coping skills.

Fear of movement or re-injury.

Perceptions of injustice.

HBAI provides physicians tools and services to help them identify barriers interfering with expected healing. Under the HBAI, a physician would request an assessment to understand what's actually causing the problem and request some intervention services, when necessary, to address the injured worker's behavioral barriers or poor coping skills that are directly related to the physical injury in the claim. It's important to note HBAI is not for mental issues with a focus on physical health problems and treatments individually designed for the injured worker.

We've hosted a webinar on this topic. For more information, you can watch the webinar.